


Sink at Dusk, Rise at Dawn

by Innin



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extended Metaphors, F/F, Post-Darkening of Valinor, Threesome - F/F/F, legendarium ladies april
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 15:19:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14263899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innin/pseuds/Innin
Summary: Anairë and Eärwen offer to ease Nerdanel's loneliness.





	Sink at Dusk, Rise at Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the "Sunrise" poem on [April 2](http://legendariumladiesapril.tumblr.com/post/172515820001/legendarium-ladies-april-prompts-for-april-02).

It is at dusk that Nerdanel feels her heart sink.

The sun is a comfort, once Arien and Tilion have established routines in their paths across the sky. Nerdanel pauses often, basking for a stolen moment in sowing or, later, harvesting until the granary of her parents' house is full again, and no one has a lack. Under the sun, Nerdanel's skin burns and reddens, and she relishes the heat of the touch like fingertips she has almost forgotten the singe of. 

She does not allow that thought often. It is still too painful, and perversely she thinks now that her husband is in Mandos until the Last Day, that she understands him better, and the grief over his mother… but she understands Finwë better also, and the emptiness in the dissolution of the bond that drove him to loving Indis: An absence he consented to much as Nerdanel did, because it is an impossibility to live half in Mandos for all that remains of time. But it is a freedom, if this plight deserves the word at all, that comes hollow and unwanted, like empty husks on an ear of wheat.

The night gnaws at the emptiness where there used to be flame. She has her own light still, of course, but she finds that it hangs like the moon in an empty sky that illuminates only enough to fade the stars from sight. 

It is perhaps not surprising, in the end, that Nerdanel refuses to endure alone. She knows - has known for long years - that Anairë and Eärwen have been lovers, against custom and Anairë's Noldorin propriety, and have again come together out of their husbandless solitudes. A letter they sent invited her, also, to find comfort with them, should she let herself deserve it. And the heart wants what it wants: An ease of present sorrow. It wants understanding, also - not the scorn she endures venturing into the city, wife and mother of kinslayers, as if the blemish were in her, not in their seed. It is a grief and a memory both, and she washes her hands of it, and in the evenings pours out the water of it onto a barren patch of earth when the sun sinks. This will nourish nothing, except memory, and she seeks not to replace that.

Her heart wants, also, the knowledge that she is wanted, the physical need that her hands and mind can no longer quench alone. She almost laughs, frustrated in her need at night in bed, or in the bath, remembering the dictums - continent and steadfast, desire that soon ceases after the birth of children. Not so, for her. She has read the letter enough times for the paper to wear thin at the folds when she finally takes heart. 

* 

Anairë receives her at the door, late after a long day of harvesting and the pains that a bath will only soothe so well. She is guided into the candlelit sitting room that looks westward down the city slope in picture windows much like Nerdanel's studio. It used to be a place of light and warmth at all times, now the darkness has swallowed the skeletons of the Trees, and when Anairë notices her unsettled looks into the plain under thin starlight and a fingernail sliver of moon, she draws the curtains. Eärwen, watching with attentive eyes from a divan under the candles, searches Nerdanel's face with a look as though she already understands what solace Nerdanel seeks from them. It is not hard to guess, perhaps, and Nerdanel relaxes some tension from her body when she finds no judgment in Eärwen's face, only curiosity and kindness. 

"My father's house has not quite the same view," Nerdanel says, apologetic. "I had not realized how much like the Darkening the night still looked from this height. Although I suppose it is a different darkness. It is blessed again." It reminds her, all things considered, of the blue shimmer on Anairë's black hair where the light hits, and Eärwen's silver may be the stars in it. They are as well-matched artistically as they are in any other aspect, and that thought alone is enough in Nerdanel to flare up the need that brought her there. 

She explains herself in a few clipped words, apprehensive again until Anairë's face softens. "You know," she says, "that Eärwen and I said we would receive you in love if you ever came to us. And we shall not renege our promise now that you have indeed come." 

Anairë's hands with their needlework callouses slip around Nerdanel's, and she is pulled forward to sit by Eärwen, whose slighter body is wrapped in watery silk shot with silver, so fine that it must be sheer in stronger light and even now lets Nerdanel guess where shadows fall on her body. Anairë, standing behind her lover, slips the fabric off Eärwen's shoulders, and Eärwen shrugs to let it pool around her waist. It leaves no doubt to Nerdanel that she came at an opportune moment, even as she drinks in the sight of Eärwen's body. They have all seen each other naked before, in the baths or swimming in the sea, but never with this purpose - at least Nerdanel has not.

It is not hard - and not driven by need only - to admit that Eärwen is beautiful, slight and swan-like in her grace. "I would sculpt you," Nerdanel breathes, reaching out in turn to touch fingers to cheekbones, to lips, as though to memorize by touch to later repeat on marble and mica flakes and rose quartz. Eärwen kisses her palm, her wrist, then pulls her against herself for a true kiss, and in that, and in Anairë's hands unloosing her hair from the twists that hold it, all thoughts of craft flee. 

A little while, and all three of them remove to the floor into a nest of blankets, their clothes left scattered and unimportant, and Anairë and Eärwen, Nerdanel discovers soon, are adept at teasing, at bringing each other and Nerdanel to the brink, and then again, only to cease for just long enough It is maddening and delightful, and Nerdanel's head swims with it. There is none of the quick and indulgent lovemaking that she knew, and, she thinks, in one of the few clear moments that are not all desire, that some of it may be on purpose. They have spoken and laughed over their husbands before, but this is different on account of more than there being three of them, or all three of them being women; it is different by design, and Nerdanel arches her body into their mouths and hands gratefully, surrendering herself into Anairë's lips on hers, to her tongue heavy with the taste of Eärwen's arousal, and to Eärwen's fingers caressing into her until finally the reprieves she has been made to wait cease, and she plunges into a bliss like blinding light. 

* 

They lie entwined after that, fingers lazily in hair and on bodies. Eärwen's head is pillowed on her waist, and sweat gleams in the hollow of her throat, on her temples. Anairë, who is flushed the colour of a rose, is curled over and against them both. Nerdanel can taste both of them in her mouth, and smell all three of them in the air surrounding them. Anairë's breath comes warm against her ear.

There is no need for speech, not yet. Nerdanel feels heavy in a pleasant, lazy way, whole in a way that was absent too long, and reluctant to move or shatter the quiet of the deep night, three breaths and the sputter of candles. Perhaps she sleeps for a while, for next she knows there are blankets around her, and her lovers' absences, but their voices come soft through the open door that she knows leads to Anairë's bath-chamber. 

The candles are close to guttering out, and there is no shimmer of light through the curtains yet. Nerdanel rises, unwilling to be alone in the semi-darkness when she came for companionship, and is momentarily surprised by the pleasant ache of muscles in her body that have not ailed her in years, a sign of love well-made, and she craves more of the same now, walking naked and barefoot over the cool tiles toward the scent of fresh water and bathing salts that remind her of Alqualondë in the flowering season.

The bathroom is wrapped in blue light and steam, and the tub is spacious, set into the ground - there on its steps Anairë and Eärwen are seated close together, and as if on a shared thought, both simultaneously reach for Nerdanel to pull her closer. She walks into the water to sit, and Anairë laughs into her hair, already curling into ringlets in the damp atmosphere in the room, taking up a thread of conversation that they had in their earlier lovemaking, when Nerdanel's hair lay like flames around her head. 

"There is our sunrise. And she has curls," Anairë says with delight bright in her voice before withdrawing to let Eärwen cup Nerdanel's jaw and kiss her. Nerdanel relaxes into the warm water and their warmth, and the waves of starry silver that are Eärwen's hair, before Anairë's night-dark strands fall over Nerdanel's shoulder at the edge of her sight when she leans in to join the kiss. 

"The night, the stars, the sunrise," says Eärwen when they have come apart to recover their breath. Nerdanel is shaken by a thrill to realize the slight, breathless tremor in those words is in part her doing. "And the mingling of all three at dawn the most beautiful." 

"It is so," Anairë agrees, with a gesture to the eastern window. There, the vaults of night stretch overhead, but the horizon lightens already into first reds and golds at the edge of the world. All three of them turn to observe in silence. 

"It is a pity that she will soon be lonesome in the sky," Nerdanel cannot help saying, words to an unbidden, unhappy thought, and the sudden fear that the ease to her loneliness was only temporary, that she will remain hollow. For the first time, the sunrise does not fill her with hope or warmth. 

"You said you took her warmth within you in the last letter you wrote," Anairë objects gently. "I think perhaps not. You have always had your fire, from the first that I knew you," and Eärwen adds, resting her hand over Nerdanel's heart before her fingers run into a caress over her breast, skin pearled with water rising under it. "Perhaps it only needs rekindling, yet again, and whenever you need. Let us?" 

Nerdanel permits it, without hesitation. How can she not? 

It is at dawn that Nerdanel feels her heart rise.


End file.
